Like the sailors lured to their doom on a rocky reef by the sweetness of her song, I’ve been known to heed the siren call of Pinterest, the visual social bookmarking site chock full of crafts, recipes, and all manner of creative endeavors from well-intentioned pinners the internet over. I do my fair share of pinning, and while I’ve certainly learned a thing or three, channeling my inner Barefoot Contessa and perfectly executing that glossily photographed salted caramel dulce de leche flan does not come naturally – or at all. To soothe those rankling feelings of inadequacy, I head on over to Pinterest Fail for a little commiseration time-out. Billed as a place where good intentions come to die, it chronicles hopeful pinners’ valiant efforts at replicating those glossily photographed projects, which have met with disastrous results. Communing with my fallen brethren in creativity gives me the courage to continue my own aspirational pinning, ever hopeful that I will chance upon a recipe I can actually pull off that bears some resemblance to the original.
Such is the case with this Strawberry Chocolate Chip Cake recipe I pinned from Julia’s Album, which she adapted from a Martha Stewart recipe.
Armed with my computer, a pound of strawberries I bought on sale, and a sanguine spirit, I tackled this recipe with surprisingly successful results! Light, delicious and bursting with strawberry-chocolatey yumminess, I’ve made this cake three times so far and taken one to a potluck dinner, where it was met with rave reviews. It usually lasts about two days at my house, and I know it’s a recipe I’ll be making for years to come. Oh, and let me share this direct quote from my son:
“It’s like heaven had a baby, and its name is Strawberry Chocolate Chip Cake”.
High praise, indeed!
Please note that the abundance of strawberries tends to make this cake extremely moist, so it’s best kept refrigerated (where it should keep well for about a week, if it lasts that long!). My son and husband prefer to eat it cold; I like to microwave it for about 10-15 seconds on high so the chocolate chips get a little melty. It can also be frozen for up to 1 month, tightly wrapped in plastic wrap.
Check out the recipe below. My low-tech photos were shot with my iPhone, using the under cabinet lighting in my kitchen. Yeah, I’m no photographer either, but, like the cake, I think they came out pretty good!
Ingredients
Instructions
Cake before baking
Fresh out of the oven. . . smells heavenly!
Strawberry Chocolate Chip Cake – it’s what’s for dessert! Thanks, Pinterest!
Visit me on Pinterest! What are your favorite Pinterest successes (or fails)? Let me know in the comments!
One of my favorite dishes to make for special occasions are empanadas, or meat pies. They are a traditional food in my family during the Christmas season and are always a big hit at parties and pot luck dinners. When my son was in elementary school his Spanish class looked forward to them every year. These tasty little meat pies are easy to make and you can tweak all the seasonings to your own taste. The best part is you can do all the prep work the night before and fry them when everyone’s ready to eat.
Here I’ll take you through the process step by step:
Step 1: The first step is to make the sofrito – this is the seasoning in which you will cook the meat filling. You can use these measurements as a guide, there are no strict rules when making sofrito – at least not for me! If you like a little more red bell pepper than green or more cilantro than flat leaf parsley, go for it!
2 red bell peppers
2 green bell peppers
1 Spanish onion
3 Roma tomatoes
2-3 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup of flat leaf parsley
1/2 cup cilantro
Sea salt
Pepper
Ground coriander seed
Ground cumin
Packet of Sazon
I use the food processor to dice the veggies and then add the spices to taste. I like to make a big batch of this and freeze it in small quantities (about 4-5 tablespoons) for use in soups, stews, beef and chicken dishes – I added 4 tablespoons to a pot of arroz con gandules (yellow rice with pigeon peas) I made for Christmas Eve dinner and it was delicious.
Step 2: Now for the meat filling. Start with 1lb. of ground sirloin or meatloaf mix, seasoned with salt and pepper or adobo. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil to a frying pan; when it’s sizzling add about 4 tablespoons of sofrito. Stir that for about a minute and then add your meat, breaking it up and stirring until cooked through.
Step 3: I use Goya Dough Discs for Empanadas to make the pies. They’re readily available in most major supermarkets and should be easy to find.
Steps 4 & 5: Place a disc on waxed paper on a cutting board to keep it from sticking. Place about a spoonful of meat in the middle of the disc as shown.
Step 6: Fold over the disc into a crescent shape, pressing down on the edges of the disc with your fingers to seal.
Step 7: Press the sealed edges of the empanada with the tines of a fork to secure the seal.
Step 8: Here’s what your empanadas should look like. I usually make them ahead up to this point and put them in the refrigerator until I’m ready to cook them, and make between 12 – 20 empanadas at a time.
Step 9: When you’re ready to fry them, add enough canola oil to a heavy frying pan to cover the empanadas; heat the oil to sizzling and carefully place the empanadas in the oil; fry until each side is golden brown as shown.
Empanadas also make great appetizers: cut the dough disc in half, fill and fold into little triangles as shown below. They are easy to tailor to any taste level from mild to spicy and are always a welcome addition to any table – maybe add them to your Super Bowl menu this year!
Ah, summertime and the living is easy. In between play dates, lazy afternoons at the pool, assorted day trips and movies, my son and I ducked into the local Barnes and Noble to escape the summer heat. Ignoring my gentle suggestions and the selections on his 6th grade reading list, my kid walked out of the book store with James Patterson’s Middle School, Get Me Out of Here! and. . . a sushi making kit.
My son loves sushi. Okay, technically he loves California rolls, which perhaps for the true sushi aficionado is not really considered sushi; like the fortune cookie, the California roll is an American invention. Created in the early 1970s by a sushi chef in Los Angeles, it consists of crab, avocado and cucumber wrapped in rice and nori (seaweed) and sprinkled with sesame seeds. But, I like to think of it as a gateway sushi – if he’s enjoying this now, maybe as he gets older he’ll move onto a tuna roll or some hardcore sashimi. Anything that expands a kid’s culinary horizons is fine by me, and $10 is a small price to pay for his delighted enthusiasm.
The Sushi Making Kit from Mud Puddle Inc. provides the essentials – recipe book, rolling mat, rice paddle, and two sets of chopsticks. Most of the ingredients are readily available at the supermarket in the Asian foods section, and I found the crab sticks at our neighborhood produce market. The sushi rice is easy to prepare, and once all the ingredients are cut up and the rice has cooled, you’re (literally) ready to roll.
My son quickly took charge, and following the easy instructions, here’s how it turned out:
The ingredients
Spreading the rice on the nori
Adding the filling
Roooolling along. . .
A little chunky but good!
Ready for slicing; he used a serrated knife
Nice!
Ah, summertime – and the sushi is easy!
All photos courtesy of Mom Meets Blog
I’m standing at the kitchen counter about to start dinner. I open the cabinet to round up the ingredients for this evening’s meal and I see it, that seemingly innocent white-lidded jar, beckoning my attention. I look away and continue gathering my supplies, but its call is too great to ignore. I remove the Nutella from the cabinet and slowly twist off its lid. I open the drawer below and grab a spoon. I put the jar on the counter and hold it in place with one hand as I dip the spoon into the jar with the other, its contents yielding against the touch of the stainless steel. I raise the spoon to my lips, closing my eyes and inhaling its familiar, delicate fragrance. As it finds its way into my mouth, this intoxicating concoction slides off the spoon and onto my tongue, enveloping it like a silky blanket, the hint of hazelnut providing the perfect counterpoint to the smooth, velvety chocolate. I open my eyes and, staring into the cabinet, inspiration strikes – dare I reach for the peanut butter? My taste buds shiver at the thought. No, I decide as my inner goddess pouts, that’s too much for now. “Perhaps another time”, I can almost hear the peanut butter grinning salaciously. I plunge the spoon into the jar again and again, greedily devouring the Nutella like a . . .
A small voice shakes me out of my reverie. “Is dinner almost ready?” my son calls out from the living room. I look down sheepishly at the jar in my hand and realize I’ve just consumed 600 calories worth of Nutella and we haven’t even had dinner yet. I put the jar down and knot my fingers on the counter, chastising myself over my loss of control. As I bite my lower lip, my subconscious smirks at me over her half-moon specs and clucks “A moment on the lips, no matter how sweet, a lifetime on the hips.”
I roll my eyes at her and angrily throw the spoon into the sink. I shove the jar back in the cabinet, vowing to never lose control like that again (at least until the next time I open the cabinet). Oh Nutella, you are a cruel master. . .
Photos courtesy of Google Images and nutellachocolate.com
What have I done?
I know my 11-year-old son is a competent kid. He likes to help his dad out at the store and recently our neighbors hired him to look after their cats while they are away on vacation. He does well in school, is a brown belt in karate, loves to play both classical and pop tunes on the piano, puts his dirty clothes in the hamper (mostly), keeps his room fairly neat, is always up and dressed for school on time, is helpful, polite, and is never ever sick at sea.
So I was a little thrown this morning when I found him looking at a YouTube video on how to make a bowl of cereal (I was kind of relieved, there are worse things to look at on YouTube). But. . . seriously?? He doesn’t know how to fix a bowl of cereal? How did that happen? I looked at the computer screen, fairly surprised that there must be other kids in the same situation judging from the variety of videos available on this subject.
While I admired his initiative to find an answer to his dilemma (there isn’t anything you can’t learn to do via YouTube – scary) I wondered why he just didn’t ask me to pour him a bowl of cereal. The truth is, whenever he says “I’m hungry”, I jump like some Pavlovian dog, ready to fix him a snack or get him a drink or start dinner a little earlier. It’s well known that hearing your baby cry during the early weeks of life can cause a mother’s breasts to leak milk – his call for food just speaks to my primal instinct as a mom to make sure my baby is fed.
But the fact is, he’s not a baby anymore. He knows where the kitchen is, but thanks to me I realized that it’s a bit of a mystery to him how the food magically appears on a plate or in a bowl. It became obvious why he didn’t ask for my help. His quest to figure out how to fix his own breakfast is an assertion of his increasing self-reliance. He’s letting me know that he’s now capable of fixing his own breakfast/snack/whatever. Maybe next he’ll let me know that he’s capable of doing his own laundry.
I watched him silently as he fixed his own cereal, poured his own juice and sat down at the table to eat breakfast. It’s a kitchen, I reminded myself, it’s not like he has to go out and forage for nuts and berries. I smiled, happy and a little sad that my baby son is becoming more self-sufficient by the minute, before my very eyes.
You know, this could be a very good thing. I wonder if he can learn to whip up breakfast in bed in time for Mother’s Day? I’m sure there must be a YouTube video for that. . .
Images courtesy of YouTube and Google Images
Mom Meets Blog 